Replacements

a project by Vlatka Horvat as part of 'Expanded Performance'

For Expanded Performance (2012) at Stroom Den Haag, artist Vlatka Horvat created the work Replacements. It is a work that unfolded over time and involved the participation of the Stroom staff - everyone from the curators and the director to the librarian and the receptionists. Each day for the duration of the exhibition a different member of the staff selected an object from anywhere in the building and relocated it to the exhibition space for the day, replacing the object that had been placed there the day before.

As each object was dislocated from its everyday place and function, it was temporarily re-imagined as an art object, put in new spatial and social relations with other objects in the exhibition space and with people who encountered it there. In addition to displacing objects and removing them from their context, Replacements playfully disrupted the work routine of people working at Stroom, engaging them in a sort of a game of call and response and recasting them as performers/installers/decision makers in a project. This booklet documents the project.